Rack and stack, Jack! This totally radical ASG Video Jukebox allowed you to play six of the Sega Genesis games you already owned for only $49.99. Imagine finally being able to play those games you bought without having to insert and remove them from the system every time. Imagine.

The problem with this device was one of scale. If you had only six carts to choose from, it’s wasn’t worth buying a jukebox device to let you switch between them quickly: keeping track of six cartridges was easy. The ad says you could chain up to six of these jukeboxes together for a total on-line selection of 36 carts. By that point you were looking at a $300 investment in gadgets that weren’t actually that useful.

On the other hand, if you had a device that let you switch between 100, 200, or 500 carts at once, that would have been legitimately handy. But the device would have cost $1000 and nobody owned that many carts back then anyway. Today, we have the same functionality in the form of emulator software, so lazy Genesis fans have long since been appeased.

If anybody actually bought one of these, I’d be interested to know about it.

[ From GamePro, September 1994, p.123 ]

Discussion Topic of the Week: How many Sega Genesis cartridges do you own? How many did you own in 1994?

5 Responses to “[ Retro Scan of the Week ] ASG Video Jukebox”

Never owned one, but I had a buddy who owned the CD expansion and purchased just about everything he could find for the console. I recall some of the early stuff for the CD unit was in the form of Japanese imports.

Back in ’94, I had a friend who owned a Genesis, and I would just go to his house all the time to play Genesis games, mostly Mortal Kombat II. I didn’t own one until shortly after the Genesis 3 came out around ’97 or so, when my mother got it for me for Christmas that year. Now, though, I own one of each version of the Genesis, and about 20 games.